Where is the Indigenous Learning Company?
India! We’ve discovered India!
-Christopher Columbus
The Indigenous Learning Company – ILC – was started in Canada, in the Province of Alberta, in 2005.
Just over one year later, the company has established an office in British Columbia, and created an affiliated company (ILC-Alberta) in collaboration with Alberta’s Paul First Nation.
In the United States, we work in Washington State with the Kalispel Tribe of Indians, who have created ILC-Washington, a company that is pursuing a statewide publishing program, working with the state legislature and other Washington tribes.
Elsewhere in the USA, we are engaged in talks with various tribes, each of them interested in addressing the learning and cultural needs of their children – and in the economic potential of an ILC affiliation.
There are almost a half-billion Indigenous people on the planet, and many of them live outside North America. So from the very beginning, we’ve been in contact with everyone from the World Bank to Native groups in every corner of the globe, exploring how we might be able to expand our model internationally. In late 2006, ILC agreed to work with South Africa’s North-West University (Makifeng Campus), to develop a project designed to carry our publishing program to southern Africa. The President of Namibia and academic leaders in Tanzania have expressed interest in joining us. ILC intends to move similarly into Latin America in 2007.
Where is ILC? Everywhere there are Native people with educational and training needs.